SNEAK PREVIEW: AUGUST 30, 2007
Mitsubishi’s HC6000 3LCD Home Theater Projector
Next week at CEDIA Expo 2007, Mitsubishi will unveil their new HC6000 home theater projector. It’s a 3LCD design that improves on the groundbreaking HC5000 in several ways, and I had a chance recently to spend a few hours fiddling with it.
Figure 1. Cosmetically, Mitsubishi’s HC6000 is identical to the HC5000,
except for the slightly larger side air filter and a second HDMI connector.
First, the projector has a faster auto iris function — so fast you can hardly notice it in action. This was a complaint for some users of the HC5000, particularly in scenes where the camera cut back and forth between dark and light backgrounds, or to white text on a dark background.
Mitsubishi has also improved black levels and contrast in this version. During same-scene side-by-side projector tests, I measured black levels on the HC6000 that were consistently 20% lower than what my HC5000 could produce.
This performance, coupled with higher contrast in the entire optical chain, produced images with plenty of contrast “punch” and richer blacks, not to mention low grays. Shadow detail rendering was also improved, so dark grays and blacks didn’t just get darker.
My overall impression, judging by HD DVD test clips from Mission Impossible III and a special Blu-ray pressing of Space Cowboys, is that the gap in black level performance between 3LCD and DLP projectors has narrowed significantly to the point where I’d call it essentially even. The quality of grayscale images from the HC6000 was as good as if not better than JVC’s DLA-RS1 LCOS projector, and right up there with the best DLP boxes I’ve tested.
As for color quality, the HC6000’s gamut was good enough to cover 100% of the REC.709 color space, with additional luminance in green and yellow spectra. The color gamut I plotted also covered better than 90% of the digital cinema color space (DCI 1.0), which requires much more luminance in the green channel.
Figure 2. The plotted color gamut for the HC6000, compared to the REC.709 HDTV color space.
There are other improvements. Mitsubishi has come up with a denser, multi-stage air filter that keeps the optical chain free of dust. The HC5000 I have here acquired a tiny but noticeable dust particle a few months into operation that would be very difficult to remove without a major disassembly. The new filter, which snaps into the existing side panel, provides 100% coverage around its edges — something the older filter didn’t.
Gone for 2007 is the DVI connection, to be replaced by a second HDMI port. Both ports are compatible with HDMI 1.3, by the way. The power zoom/focus/lens shift function is also improved, letting the user choose between a fast mode of operation, or to make adjustments in incremental steps. And you can now disable the grid pattern during lens operation.
Finally, text size for the OSD menus has been increased by about 50%. Previously, the menu size was tied to the projector’s resolution, which meant that it was very hard to read when I stood 10 feet or more from my 82-inch front screen. There’s also been a price decrease to $3,500.
I’ll have a more detailed review of the HC6000 in early October. If you are going to CEDIA, stop by the Mitsubishi booth and check it out.
